UK Energy Scheme Missing Huge Savings, Says Report

By side-lining emerging technology, often powered by biomass heating, that produces not only electricity but heat too, the UK government’s energy scheme will miss out on astronomical savings, according to a new report.

The UK’s capacity market auction is ignoring the efforts of combined heat and power (CHP), which is affecting businesses options in cutting both costs and carbon emissions.

According to the report, which was thoroughly dissected on The Telegraph, around 2,000 factories in the UK have adopted CHP, making an estimated saving of £375 million in energy bills. However, the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) which has produced the report, has claimed that capacity market auction is preventing further growth.

ADE’s Tim Rotheray warned the UK government that they need to embrace CHP to remain competitive, especially decarbonising as cost-efficiently as possible: “By installing CHP, thousands of businesses across the UK could help lighten the load of the cost of the energy transition while delivering much needed new capacity, helping to balance the grid and reduce network investment costs,” he said.

In the UK, CHP energy makes up only six per cent of the overall energy production, however, in some European countries, it can make up to 50 per cent of the energy ‘mix’. Denmark and Latvia have the highest percentage of CHP energy production in the world at present.

It’s believed that CHP, which can run on even cleaner renewable energy sources such as biomass and biogas as well as regular gas, could save the UK £700 million a year by the year 2030.